Sorry if the question isn’t clear. But, I’m curious to know why other athletes focus on breathing to bring oxygen to their muscles.
In: Biology
I used to swim competitively.
Part of our training was “anaerobic” drills – learning to do as much as possible with only the air in your lungs. An example: Swim as far as possible underwater on a single breath. In a 25 yard pool, we had several swimmers who could do 2 full lengths of the pool and a few who could do almost 3 lengths without a breath.
Another part of the training part of competitive training is learning to swim as *efficiently* as possible. No wasted motion. Most people would be surprised at how inefficient their swimming strokes are. Breathing during a stroke actually increases inefficiency.
Combine these two things and you get a swimmer who can do a lot, efficiently, while taking very few breaths.
Also, look at the swimmers after they finish their event. They are breathing heavily to reoxygenate their bodies. They starved their bodies of fresh oxygen to swim as fast as possible and then have to spend several minutes breathing heavily to get back to an equilibrium point.
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